Tired of pop-up ads? So are we. Fortunately, we found eight apps that promise to remove these Web-surfing irritants.

Annoyances online
Most pop-ups come from Web sites themselves. To stop these common annoyances, you'll need an app that blocks them at the source. One such app, EdenSoft PopUpCop, not only stops pop-ups from filling your desktop, it also eliminates harmful ActiveX and Java scripts, turns off background music, stops animation, and blocks cookies. It even purges your Internet Explorer browser history and temp file whenever you exit the browser. PopUpCop integrates with your IE toolbar for fast enabling, disabling, and customization.

InterMute AdSubtract Pro goes one step further by removing ads from the Web page itself, but doesn't cover all the security bases as PopUpCop does. AdSubtract works with Netscape and Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, AdSubtract uses a Web proxy so that all of your Internet page requests pass through their servers for ad cleansing first. Sometimes, this can slow your Web page retrieval.

FailSafe Technologies Guard-IE does a little of each; it offers good online privacy, and it blocks pop-ups. It won't, however, remove any ad-serving software from your PC, nor will it physically remove ads from a Web page. Finally, there's Sunbelt iHatePopups, which offers a no-frills app that simply blocks pop-ups. It doesn't, for example, integrate with Internet Explorer as PopUpCop, AdSubtract Pro and Guard-IE do.

Pop-up danger from within
But unfortunately, blocking pop-ups from Web sites might not get rid of them altogether. Yet another source of pop-up advertising comes from within your PC: tiny ad-serving programs on your hard drive itself. Ad-serving software, sometimes called adware or spyware, can track the Web sites you visit, as well as other personal information, and send that data back to the advertising companies. These apps can install on your system without your knowledge when you download certain free software or when you visit some Web sites.

To remove these, you'll need a program such as Spybot Search and Destroy or a similar product, such as Lavasoft's Ad-aware. And, if you're willing to pay for this sort of thing, there's a new app from Webroot called Spy Sweeper that claims to remove more adware than Spybot or Ad-aware. Finally, Net Nanny Ad-Free provides both a pop-up blocker and ad-serving software removal